Kolkata Police Reshuffles Since May: Did Churn Weaken Puja Policing?

Nineteen people died in the crush at the Chorbagan Sarbojanin Durga Puja pandal in north Kolkata on Saturday evening. A senior police officer has said that far fewer police personnel and private security guards were present than were needed, and that a misleading announcement and sudden rain set off the rush. That admission has raised a wider question: has repeated reshuffling of the police since the change of government on May 4 left the force less able to manage the city’s biggest festival?

IPB News examined every police transfer order reported in the public domain since the Assembly election results were declared on May 4, 2026, and reports on how the city’s police and traffic arrangements have fared. This is what the record shows, and what it does not.

A Year of Unusual Churn

The turnover began before the election. On January 31, the previous government moved 52 inspector-rank officers of Kolkata Police, 47 of them officers-in-charge or additional officers-in-charge of police stations, and named Supratim Sarkar as Police Commissioner, ETV Bharat reported. Six weeks later, on March 16, the Election Commission replaced him with Ajay Kumar Nand and changed the state’s police chief as well. On March 30, the Commission transferred the heads of 173 police stations across the state, 31 of them in Kolkata, All India Radio and The Federal reported, with further changes to station heads in early April.

The BJP won 207 of 294 seats when results were declared on May 4, and Suvendu Adhikari was sworn in as Chief Minister on May 9. Mr Nand was retained as Commissioner, and he led the force through the Puja.

Four Major Orders Since May

IPB found four large transfer orders reported since the new government took office.

June 8: The government moved 179 IPS and West Bengal Police Service officers across the state, including posts in the Kolkata Police commissionerate, in what PTI called the largest exercise since the BJP came to power. Reported Kolkata changes included a new Additional Commissioner (Crime) and a new Deputy Commissioner for the South-West division, Millennium Post and UNI reported.

July 14: Thirty-three officers were transferred, including a new state intelligence chief and a new Bidhannagar Police Commissioner, The Shillong Times and ETV Bharat reported. ETV Bharat put the figure at 28 IPS and five WBPS officers. IANS linked the reshuffle to criticism of the police response to the rape and murder of a minor in Baruipur.

August 1: Kolkata Police moved 18 inspectors across city police stations and units, including new officers-in-charge at Bhowanipur and Metiabruz, under an order signed by Commissioner Ajay Nand, Dynamite News reported.

September 25: Three weeks before the Puja, 23 IPS and WBPS officers were moved. Kolkata got a new Additional Commissioner, Sudheer Kumar Neelakantam; a new Joint Commissioner (Traffic), Bholanath Pandey, replacing Surya Pratap Yadav; and a new Joint Commissioner (Security), Sukhen Hira, according to the Home and Hill Affairs Department notification reported by National Herald and Indian Masterminds.

Together, these four orders account for at least 253 transfers, most of them outside Kolkata. IPB could not find a public count of transfers at the ranks that do most of the work on the ground: sub-inspectors, assistant sub-inspectors, constables and traffic sergeants. Such orders are rarely published, so the full scale of turnover in the city is likely higher than the public record shows.

What It Means for Festival Policing

Transfers after a change of government are routine across India, and the pre-election moves were ordered by the Election Commission, not by any party. Turnover in itself does not prove that policing has weakened.

But managing a Durga Puja crowd depends heavily on local knowledge. Station officers need to know which lanes flood, which pandals draw the biggest crowds and which exits become bottlenecks. Kolkata’s two senior officers in charge of traffic and security were changed less than a month before the city’s busiest week. The Supreme Court’s 2006 directions in the Prakash Singh case called for a minimum two-year tenure for officers in key field posts, partly to protect that kind of experience.

The police did plan for the Puja. Commissioner Nand held a coordination meeting with Puja committees at Nazrul Mancha, asked them to keep entry and exit routes separate and to prepare for rain, and the force said about 10,000 police personnel and nearly 21,000 home guards and NCC cadets would be deployed, The Daily Jagran reported. Chorbagan’s exit gate was where the crush happened, and rain was a trigger, the very two risks the Commissioner had flagged.

What Went Wrong at Chorbagan

According to the initial police probe reported by PTI, the crush followed a combination of sudden rain, a misleading announcement asking visitors to leave immediately for fear the structure would collapse, and serious lapses in crowd management. The senior officer said the number of police and private guards on site was far lower than required. Local residents alleged that police were mainly posted near the VIP entrance, India.com reported; police have not responded to that claim.

Seven people have been arrested, including the puja committee’s secretary and vice-president and two private security in-charges, and a case of culpable homicide not amounting to murder has been registered. No police officer has been suspended so far. Chief Minister Adhikari has said those held responsible could include police personnel as well as organisers, and a Special Investigation Team led by a sitting Calcutta High Court judge is to examine the incident. On Sunday, a day after the crush, the state government assigned seven experienced IPS officers, several of whom have previously served in Kolkata Police, to Durga Puja crowd management in the city, Sangbad Pratidin and ETV Bharat reported. They are Murlidhar Sharma, Rupesh Kumar, Miraj Khalid, Tarun Haldar, Priyabrata Roy, Deepak Sarkar and Srihari Pandey; Mr Sharma was in the anti-corruption branch and Mr Kumar in the state police STF. The move suggests the government itself saw a need for officers who know the city’s festival crowds, though it has not said so publicly.

By contrast, after the stampede outside Bengaluru’s Chinnaswamy Stadium in June 2025, the Karnataka government suspended the city’s police commissioner and other officers within two days.

The Traffic Question

Residents and some reports have complained of worsening traffic in the run-up to the Puja. A Kolkata24x7 report in the week before Panchami described long jams at Gariahat, Esplanade, Sealdah and Tollygunge, with a trip from Manicktala to Sealdah taking about 45 minutes, and said the Police Commissioner had acknowledged the delays and promised relief from Panchami. On Panchami, waiting times at Sealdah and Esplanade Metro stations rose to almost three times normal, The Times of India reported. In August, Kolkata Traffic Police launched a single helpline, 1073, for jams, broken signals and illegal parking.

IPB could not find official data, such as journey-time surveys or complaint counts, showing that traffic in the city has deteriorated over the past five months. Without that, the evidence remains anecdotal. The change at the top of the traffic police on September 25 is a matter of record; whether it affected traffic is not yet clear.

What Remains to Be Answered

The judge-led SIT will need to answer questions that bear directly on the transfer record. How many police personnel were assigned to Chorbagan, and how many were present? How long had the officers in charge of the Girish Park police station area, and of the division, been in their posts? Who approved the pandal’s entry and exit plan, and did the Fire Services’ reported objections reach the police? Was a crowd plan in place for sudden rain?

Until those answers come, the honest conclusion is a narrow one. Bengal’s police leadership has changed unusually often in 2026, and two of Kolkata’s most important festival posts changed hands weeks before the Puja. Whether that churn contributed to 19 deaths is the question the inquiry must now answer. Follow the latest in IPB’s Chorbagan stampede live coverage and our report on the dandiya arch collapse in Hyderabad, which happened the same evening.

Based on reporting by ETV Bharat (January reshuffle), Business Today (March 16), All India Radio, The Federal, The Quint, PTI via NewsDrum, Millennium Post, UNI, IANS via The Shillong Times, ETV Bharat (July reshuffle), Dynamite News, National Herald, Indian Masterminds, The Daily Jagran, PTI via Punjab Kesari, India.com, Deccan Herald, Kolkata24x7, Sangbad Pratidin, ETV Bharat Bangla, The Times of India via Urban Acres and IANS via Social News XYZ.

Image: Dreamstime (Kolkata Police parade rehearsal, Red Road).